“I think we have been quite unambiguous about the concerns we have on this issue”.
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“It is clear to the federal government that the illegal expansion of settlements in occupied areas is a serious threat for the two-state solution”, a Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement.
The committee has also advanced plans for a senior citizens’ home of 234 housing units in the settlement of Elkana.
Israeli soldiers resorted, Friday, to the use of excessive force against the nonviolent protesters in Kufur Qaddoum village, in the northern West Bank district of Qalqilia, shooting a journalist with a gas bomb in his head, and causing dozens of residents to suffer the effects of teargas inhalation.
“These policies have effectively given the Israeli government’s green light for the pervasive advancement of settlement activity in a new and potentially unlimited way”, Kirby warned. According to the BBC, the U.S. State Department says it is “deeply concerned” about the “very serious and growing threat” to peace with Palestinians.
The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks brokered by the U.S. collapsed in 2014.
Speaking alongside him at the same settlers’ event, Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev (Likud) promised that in ten years, “there won’t be a Palestinian state here, and there will be a million Jews in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]”. The settlements are considered illegal under global law, though Israel disputes this.
The development underscored that Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has continued to move forward during a more than two-year freeze in Mideast peace efforts.
Bulldozers, heavily escorted by Israeli troops and police officers, entered the Sur Baher neighborhood on the southeastern outskirts of East al-Quds and demolished a house they said had been built without a license.
The Palestinians strongly support the French initiative, but Israel has rejected it, calling instead for direct negotiations.
So when self-proclaimed “outpost entrepreneur” Shimon Riklin brings a few ramshackle trailers into the West Bank and occupies some hilltop, officials have little reason to care, and even if the Palestinians complain, there is little incentive to do anything about it.
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They say an Abbas-Netanyahu meeting would lead nowhere without a freeze on settlement building, the release of Palestinian prisoners and a deadline for an end to the Israeli occupation.
